Revealing a dark stain on Australia’s history

Marking the graves of Pacific Islanders brought to Australia in the early twentieth century to work in Queensland’s cane fields.

Transcript

BEN KNIGHT, PRESENTER: For years, farmer Brian Courtice suspected there was a mass grave on his family property near Bundaberg. He'd been told as much by his grandfather, who himself heard it from the neighbours when he bought the farm in the 1920s.

Like many other farms in colonial-era Queensland, it had been a sugar plantation - and, like others, had used labourers from the South Sea Islands, in conditions that have been compared to slavery.

Now, Brian Courtice has found proof that bodies are buried there and he wants the area heritage listed.

Matt Wordsworth reports.

MATT WORDSWORTH, REPORTER: Sunnyside is a picturesque property almost 50 hectares of historic farmland just outside Bundaberg. But it is not the tranquillity that brings visitors today.

MATT WORDSWORTH: Brian Courtice's grandfather bought the place in the 1920 and neighbours told of a burial site for South Sea Islanders.

BRIAN COURTICE: I assume that this first row was where they buried them first, here.

KEL NAGAS: Okay.

MATT WORDSWORTH: But it was only this month that the former Federal MP uncovered the proof he was looking for.

BRIAN COURTICE: This is the child's grave here.

MATT WORDSWORTH: From the late 1800s Sunnyside was a sugar plantation. The workforce was South Sea Islanders.

It was a model used throughout Queensland. The State Government estimates 62,000 workers were brought in from the Western Pacific, mostly from Vanuatu and the Solomon Islands. Some through outright kidnapping, or blackbirding as it was known, others through indentured labour. These were three-year contracts for far less pay than awarded European workers and had to be signed to be legal but few could read English.

ALAN JOHNSON, SOUTH SEA ISLANDER COMMUNITY MEMBER: I don't like the word "indentured". It covers up a lot of sins. I think when you bring people out and you pay them a pittance and you transfer that money over into whatever it was, flour or sugar, rice, that's not a way. It was still bringing them as slaves.

MATT WORDSWORTH: After three years, labourers were supposed to be shipped home but with death rates more than triple that of the wider population, many didn't make it. In Bundaberg they weren't allowed to be buried in the local cemetery.

GAYLE READ, BUNDABERG REGIONAL COUNCIL CEMETERIES SUPERVISOR: They weren't classified as Catholic or Protestant or Church of England.

MATT WORDSWORTH: So they weren't allowed to be buried here?

GAYLE READ: No.

MATT WORDSWORTH: When did that change?

GAYLE READ: In the mid-40s, 1940s.

MATT WORDSWORTH: Some were laid to rest elsewhere on the cemetery sounds, a section for migrants with no listed religion. Records only show a few hundred names far short of the number who actually died.

GAYLE READ: They were mainly buried actually on the plantations or properties where they worked. So if, a lot of the properties had shanties where the Kanakas lived. So a burial site would be not that far from where they resided.

MATT WORDSWORTH: Gayle Read heard the stories about Sunnyside and took the ground-penetrating radar she uses at Bundaberg cemetery to investigate. It shows disturbances in the soil and she found 29 graves. Right where those who passed the information on to Brian Courtice's grandfather said they would be.

And when you were out there, how clear was it to you that there were graves there?

GAYLE READ: It was clear as what I get here, yes.

MATT WORDSWORTH: It's been a revelation for South Sea Islander descendants who say it is a tangible link to the past and their identity.

ALAN JOHNSON: Here we see the blood crying out from the ground of our people. It is a very emotional thing for us.

MATT WORDSWORTH: Kel Nagas has been bringing people here for years but says it is not a well known chapter of Queensland history.

KEL NAGAS: Five kilometres down the road, there's children go into a classroom down here. Do they know what happened up in these cane fields that they grew up around?

MATT WORDSWORTH: Dr Betty Wini and her husband Dr Lyndes Wini are visiting from the Solomons and heard about the grave site while staying in town.

DR LYNDES WINI: It has made me want to learn more about what happened to our people some 150 years ago and for me to tell my children as well that they do have some kind of historical links with Australia.

DR BETTY WINI: I would like for something to be done there so that all this can be known. Even though it was a dark time then, but I would like my kids and their children to come here and know that this is an important part of our history as well.

BRIAN COURTICE: When my grandfather and his brother bought the place in 1922...

MATT WORDSWORTH: Brian Courtice says the best way to preserve the area is to have it heritage listed.

BRIAN COURTICE: I think it is crucial because these people are human beings. Most of them were brought against their will, some were coerced or conned. The fact is it they deserve the dignity and the respect of having a marked gave. That's what we expect for our families and surely they are entitled to that as well.

MATT WORDSWORTH: The Queensland Heritage Council will consider the application early in the New Year. Gayle Read hopes it spurs further research.

GAYLE READ: I just wish people would come forward. If they know they've got a grave site anywhere on their properties, we don't want it out there for the public to come and come on their properties, but we would like to GPS it and permanently record it so it's there for history.

MATT WORDSWORTH: How does it make you feel that the shanties where they lived were just over here and the graves are just over there?

KEL NAGAS: Mate, it's very emotional. It makes me feel like... That I am something. That I am somebody.